


CTRL-X

by longhairshortfuse



Series: One Shot Wonders [4]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Crack, Short One Shot, character meets authors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-08
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2584979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairshortfuse/pseuds/longhairshortfuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil gets a letter from Station Management that makes him angry. He decides to give them a piece of his mind, whatever the consequences.</p><p>But Station Management is not what he expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	CTRL-X

**Author's Note:**

  * For [BBCotaku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BBCotaku/gifts).
  * Inspired by [What the hell just happened?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2575430) by [BBCotaku](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BBCotaku/pseuds/BBCotaku). 



> I posted the idea on Tumblr but decided I wasn't going to write this.   
> And I did resist for a while, but it wouldn't leave me alone.

Cecil sat in his booth after his show, an envelope twirling in his fingers. He considered filing in the cylindrical woven-wire repository in the corner of the room for the duty intern to dispose of later, but opened it. If it really came from under the door of Station Management, as the intern had said, then it must be important.  
There was one sheet of paper inside the plain manila cover. Folded once across the centre. 

_To: Cecil Palmer, Voice of Night Vale_  
 _Re: your recent attitude adjustment failure_  
  
 _It has been brought to the attention of Station Management that the Voice of Night Vale has become a little "whiny". This must stop. Your job is to promote listener satisfaction through the medium of the cheerfully spoken word, not to depress listeners with talk of lost scientists and endless desert wastelands and curses about disappearing oak doors._  
 _While we are not unsympathetic, you **do** still work here, for the moment, we would like you to broadcast in a more upbeat style._  
 _In short, cheer the fuck up, Palmer._  
 _Regards,_  
 _Station Management_

Cecil read it through again and again, becoming increasingly furious with each iteration. How dare they! He crumpled it up and threw it at the wastepaper basket. He missed. That was the final straw.  
He got up, tipping his chair over backwards in his haste to leave the booth. He stomped down the corridor, growling at interns. Maureen snarled back.  
Cecil paced the corridors until he had pushed through his burning rage to that area of calm certainty on the other side. He knew exactly what to say and exactly who, or what, to say it to. 

Maureen went to the break room where there was a small conference of living interns amongst the memorials.  
"Wassup with the Talent today?"  
"Oh. Maureen. Um, we were fed up with the depressing shows full of _woe is me my boyfriend is stuck in some otherworldly desert in another dimension oh please call me please come home boo hoo hoo..._ so we drafted a memo about it. Intern Kenny typed it up, I found a spare manila envelope and we gave it to Cecil. Told him it was from Station Management."  
Maureen glared at them.  
"I was stuck in that hellish netherworld too, you know, and if Cecil wants to cry about that weird scientist _we will fucking let him._ Understand?"  
By this point Maureen was nose to nose with the intern who seemed to be the spokesperson. He nodded and stepped backwards into Intern Kenny who fell into a patch of void left over from some spilled transdimensional orange juice and was never seen again.  
"Oh! You killed..."  
 _"SHUT UP!"_

Cecil reasoned with himself in his usual manner. He loved Carlos and missed him. That meant everyone else loved Carlos too and missed him, right? He wanted Carlos to call therefore everyone must want Carlos to call too and hear whatever he had to say about the desert with the pink sand and the lighthouse and the _mountain,_ yeah, a mountain. Cecil wanted to hear how Carlos was making progress with his science and his search for a way to come home to Night Vale, so everyone else must want to hear it too. If Cecil was sad because Carlos hadn't called, surely Night Vale was sad because Carlos hadn't called.  
How could he possibly change the way he reported events on his show! The listeners wouldn't stand for it. He wouldn't stand for it.  
He would knock on the door of Station Management and tell them so himself. 

Maureen found him pacing the corridor by the old, abandoned studios in the bowels of the building. She watched for a few minutes, judging when he might listen. He seemed calm but the smile on his face looked wrong, didn't match his piercing gaze. Maureen held the intern death toll in mind as she chose her moment and stepped into view.  
"Palmer!"  
Cecil stopped, faced Maureen.  
"Don't do it, whatever _it_ is. You'll get someone else ki..."  
"Stop right there, Maureen. It's time someone told Station Management when they've gone too far. Carlos has been stuck in that desert for _months_ and I want him to come home, We all want him home, right?"  
"Of course." Maureen backed off. _And then you will chatter on about how great it is to have him home and eventually shut up about it._  
Maureen reported back to the interns in the break room. Cecil was going to confront Station Management. They all wanted to watch. Maureen armed herself with the official NVCR baseball bat that usually lived under the reception desk. 

Cecil approached the door and paused. He was aware of two pairs of eyes further down the corridor peering around the corner at him. He looked round and they were gone. He turned back to the door in front of him. The lights inside were flickering red and black and purple against the opaque frosted glass panel that had _Station Management_ painted on in decorative script. There was a tiny shred of yellow, the corner of a yellow triangle that had stubbornly clung to the door as a reminder that things could be worse. Cecil picked at it with his fingernail until it came off.  
He raised his hand to knock but stopped when, with a hiss, a cloud of vapour emanated from under the door and made him cough. He stepped back to wait for the fumes to dissipate. He watched the frosted glass panel as shapes danced across it, shadows rushing around the room and settling here, there, before dashing dizzily away in a different direction. It was mesmerising.  
An intern giggled. Cecil shook himself and knocked on the door.  
Nothing changed.  
Except that the door oozed some kind of thicker-than-water red substance that was almost unlike blood from the place Cecil's knuckles had touched. He studied the back of his hand. Nothing. 

He knocked again, louder. This time the response was a cut-off scream loud enough to make him step back in alarm. He waited. The noises from the office settled back into their usual pattern of clicks and whirrs and ghostly moans and shrieks. Cecil put his hand on the door handle. It turned and the door opened with a quiet creak.  
Cecil stepped in and the door slammed shut behind him. The intern who had pulled the short straw crept up to the door and watched as Cecil's shadow got bigger and fainter and faded away as he walked further in. 

Cecil looked around in surprise. There was a projector on a table being fed images from a laptop beside it, images of destruction and gore. A surround sound system, set up with its focus the door behind him provided the familiar sounds of the Station Management office. On the shelf above the desk sat a copy of H. P. Lovecraft's writing, a ream of plain paper, a pot of red ink next to a selection of pen nibs and a stack of manila envelopes.  
Apart from that, the room was bare.  
Cecil considered calling out. He took a deep breath in, started to form a _hello?_ but the word stuck in his throat. He held his breath as he noticed the pattern of cracks in the wall before him and the strange placement of a little square patch of contrasting paint at waist height. There was a hidden door.  
He walked over to the door and put his ear against it. Nothing. The inner room must be as well soundproofed as his booth. Either that or it was empty, Perhaps it was a cupboard. Cecil wished Carlos was here, he would use science to explain all of this. It wouldn't make any more sense to Cecil but at least he'd be comforted by the fact that there _was_ an explanation that didn't involve monsters and ripping limb from limb and pain and death.  
 _Carlos! My Carlos,_ thought Cecil, strengthening his resolve to give Station management a piece of his brain. No, that wasn't the saying at all, was it?  
He felt around the cracks that outlined the door. There was a slight breeze, cool. The cupboard, or whatever it was, had air con. He pressed the coloured square and the door silently slid open.  
Cecil stared. 

Three voices in unison, _"Who are you and what the fuck are you doing in the cupboard?"_  
Three voices again, _"I work here!"_  
The two men who sat at a small table in the Station Management cupboard looked at each other. The one who was not tall spoke on his own.  
"Okay. Where did you come from? What were you doing hiding in my cupboard?" He turned to the other man, the one who was not short. "You think we should call the cops?"  
The man who was not short frowned. "No, he's not threatening, he looks as confused as I am right now."  
He got up and stepped over to Cecil, who still stood in the doorway. Cecil stepped back as the man stuck his head into the outer office with the scary sound and light effects.  
"You came out of this cupboard? How long have you been hiding in here?"  
Cecil looked at the two men and their cramped accommodation, confusion growing.  
"You're the ones sitting in a cupboard! This is the office of NVCR Station Management! Where are the monsters? The tentacles and the soul-rending jaws of death? You don't look like the Station Managers I expected. I didn't expect... uh... anything so... um..." _normal?_

"Wait wait wait, who did you say you work for?"  
"NVCR"  
"And that is...?"  
"Night Vale Community Radio. I'm the _Voice of Night Vale."_  
"No you're not. Are you a cosplayer? Look, you've overstepped a boundary here. I don't know how you got in, but the way out is over there. Just go and we won't call the police."  
"Where? You're in a cupboard. This is the only door."  
The man stepped through the door beside Cecil then turned to speak to his companion.  
"You have _got_ to come and see this." 

After the three men got tired of jumping in and out of each other's realities, Cecil retreated to his own world and spoke from the doorway.  
"Are you Station Management? I got a complaint from you because I miss Carlos so much that I talk about him now and then and occasionally talk with him on air if he calls during my show. My listeners and I all want Carlos to come home. If I'm unhappy, they're unhappy. We would like for Carlos to come home. Can you understand that, in your frankly _really weird_ management dimension? That's why I talk about him sometimes. To remind everyone that he is part of Night Vale now, he belongs with us. To remind Carlos, if he's listening."  
The two men looked at each other.  
"Go back to your world and we'll see what we can do."  
Cecil backed out and shut the door. He opened it again and found the cupboard empty.  
In the _Station Management Dimension,_ the men read over the script on the screen in front of them.  
"Okay we need to take this bit out and replace it with something less insane. Look." One man pointed and the other nodded. Highlight, ctrl-x, save.  
"What were we just talking about?" 

Back at the station, Cecil could not remember for the life of him why he had wanted to go storming into Station Management's office. He glowered at the interns in the corridor. Something about Carlos bothered him but he just couldn't grasp that particular memory. Was it that Carlos was having such a good time science-ing in the desert? Or that he hadn't put enough effort into finding a way home yet? or that Night Vale was no longer the _most scientifically interesting_ place?  
He remembered being angry, angry enough to hurt. His fury rose up and he blasted through the interns in his path back to his booth, grabbing Intern Maureen's baseball bat from her hands.  
There was barely room for a proper swing but Cecil didn't stop until there was nothing breakable left unbroken. He was done. 

Cecil passed Station Management's office for what he decided would be the last time. An envelope flew out and hit his foot. He picked it up and opened it.  
 _You are the Voice of Nightvale. This is your life. Would you give it up so easily? Fix your booth in time for your next broadcast._  
Cecil shook as he returned to his studio. Quitting was not an option. He sat, head in his hands, on the floor outside his booth as two interns swept out the broken equipment and brought in serviceable replacements from one of the old, abandoned studios.  
His phone double-buzzed as a text arrived.  
 _I miss you Cecil, I am looking for a way home to you, I promise._


End file.
